Click HERE for the Audio Edition!
While the New Year gives us a measurable marker for change and the passing of time, it doesn’t fundamentally mean anything. The calendar may have changed, but we have not. I’ve overloaded myself before with grandiose plans and meticulous lists that end up crushing me and coming to naught. That’s pretty depressing and I really don’t need any more of that right now. With the pandemic and unsettled political climate still raging, I can’t expect the chronic, low-level stress and anxiety to go away with the turn of a page.
I need a plan.
But I am also very bad at planning.
You see, there are a lot of projects in various stages, and with so many things to choose from, it can be hard to narrow my focus and buckle down on just one thing. When you already feel overwhelmed in regular life, your creative life (which may already tend to get pushed to the sidelines) also becomes overwhelming. Especially when you feel like you are supposed to be “having fun.”
So… I don’t actually expect to make a great deal of measurable progress this year. What I am going to try to do is take stock, get myself organized, see what stage each project is in, and do research on agents and other writing-related things. (And of course there is the ever-present backlog of Audio Editions I need to catch up on… *sigh*) It won’t be glamorous and it will be slow, but I feel like I’m at a point where there are too many things spiraling out of control due to lack of focus and proper prep.
Related to this, I finished my year-long blog series on Second Unit Reviews about Obscure Books From Childhood. That required posting every Thursday for a year, so I’m a bit burnt out from that. I will continue putting posts up, but they will be more sporadic unless it’s part of a themed series. If you have any suggestions as to what you might like to see, either as an individual review or part of a series, let me know, but don’t expect posts to be quite as regular there for a while. (Since I just finished binge-watching Season 2 of The Mandalorian, I’m kind of on a Star Wars kick… and I just realized that I never put my “7 Days of Star Wars” reviews from Facebook onto Second Unit Reviews! But it would have to be renamed because there are more than seven films in the main series… but at the same time I have a bit of a mismatch of movies and TV shows, many of which are spin-offs… I’ll have to ponder how to arrange that.)
So, here is (loosely) what I plan on doing:
- Organize world-building information for Faylinn by uploading it to World Anvil daily.
- When that is complete, organize prose for Faylinn and continue writing more.
- Organize prose for Spells in Sepia on alternate days, or as a weekend project.
- Rank existing projects in order of completion to see which project needs what amount and type of work.
- Organize and condense desktop computer and cloud files (do a little bit each day or every other day).
- Re-edit and resubmit Okami Amaterasu for an improved final print (on days when I don’t want to work on Faylinn or Spells in Sepia).
- Research agents for Courting the Moon (once a week) and start sending out queries when I find some promising ones.
- Try to record and edit an Audio Edition from my backlog each week.
- Take a day off each month for a personal #BookBall to just chill and read.
The Cat's Cradle : On Hiatus! 